Fly an ability?!

[Qes]

If were going to be thinking of flying units as on a different layer (effectively) of engagement, like they are in reality, then not only should flying units be able to move over and through the enemy unit areas of non-flyers, but so too should the enemy be able to "walk under" flying units that never land.

This would require that some units are "always flying" and others that land.

I for one could imagine the balloon your talking about being an "always flying" and non-flying units could not attack it, but could walk underneath it.

Where as others, like drakes and griffons perhaps land (especially for battle considerations with 'non'-flyers. And are attackable by non-flyers as well.

So two traits would be necesssary:

Flying (denoting ability to attack other air units and fly over ground units) and "landing" which would say that it could be attacked by non-flyers.


However, this brings up difficulties when passing over enemy units - did you want to attack them? or just fly over them?

Needless to say it gets over complicated from there. It might be easier just to give all flying units some sort of abillity dealing soley with ZOC.

It'd work like skirmisher, but instead of ignoring all units, it'd only ignore non-flying units. Where as it would never ignore itself (as it'd be present in other flying units)
-Qes

[Weeksy]

why not just allow WML to filter for movetype?

[irrevenant]

Why not just allow WML to filter by movetype?

That sounds like it would do the trick...

BTW, where are the movetypes defined? I wanted to look some up for the faction I'm working on.

If we're going to be thinking of flying units as on a different layer (effectively) of engagement, like they are in reality, then not only should flying units be able to move over and through the enemy unit areas of non-flyers, but so too should the enemy be able to "walk under" flying units that never land.

Multiple layers (ala Starcraft) would be a huge change that would probably require an engine rewrite. IMO we should fall back on WINR/KISS and say that when two opposed units meet they will automatically choose to engage in combat. eg. A flying unit will automatically engage rather than allow an enemy unit to "walk under" it.

The Balloon is a special case, however. It's not manouevrable enough to automatically engage in melee by "swooping down to attack" like a gryphon, drake or bat . I'd like to see the following "Aircraft" ability for the balloon if possible (most of this was proposed by mr_svperstar):
* Skirmisher vs non-flying units only.
* Cannot be engaged in melee. If possible, the usual sword/move mouse pointer should just be replaced by a "no go" pointer if they try. If that's not possible, the ranged-combat screen should appear instead when someone tries. If the attacker has no ranged attack, a ranged "no attack" should be made available.

Note: the unit will have the typical flying stuff (eg. identical movement
cost & defence everywhere) but that won't be part of the ability.

[Erk]

why not just allow WML to filter for movetype?

Trouble is that new movetypes can be introduced. For example, say you have an attack special (let's call it Low Altitude) that doesn't work against flying units. It does this by having a filter that excludes known flier movetypes. Then, dude makes a custom unit for his campaign: he then has to alter the Low Altitude special to include his new flier.

For a single unit and a single special, this is not a big deal, but it could become a tangled mess of code and exclusions/inclusions.

I suggest having a line in movetype that is something like:
locomotion=
with fields along the lines of
alwaysflying, flying, aquan, land, special

even that might be too many. Basically you would need to differ between units that are always airborne, units that can land and fight/walk, and units that never fly. I don't see that swimming units really need to be discerened, since swimming is more related to terrain types than flying.

Alternatively it could be just "flight=" with the options "full, short, none" or something.


Anyway, folks can feel free to disregard the next offtopic bit:
[offtopic]
I notice a trend in the Ideas forum with threads like this one that bothers me a bit. The Wesnoth community has sometimes got a kind of offended attitude towards suggestions of changes... it comes, I think, from so many changes being in violation of the FPI or being on an absurdly large scale. Howevver, in cases of things like this, it seems like people just knee-jerk with a "we don't need it, that isn't how it is now and it works fine now" reaction before thinking about what the change might make possible.

Sure, Wesnoth is presently an awesome game, but simply given the resistance to any changes to Default era, it must be clear that Default Era units and settings are almost done. If that is the case, where is Wesnoth going to move next? Is the next mainline innovation going to be just another variation on Default Era? There are not all that many more permutations and ideas that can be plumbed from existing WML without getting stale. Yes, I know there ARE some, perhaps even plenty for an entire new era of Wesnoth and series of mainline campaigns, but my point is simply that resistance to new ideas that could allow depth of play - and more importantly, depth of development - shouldn't be dismissed so instantly. That doesn't mean they have to be accepted... I just get the impression that a significant portion of the community is inclined to hold to the "I don't like it because that isn't how it is done right now" attitude.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to point fingers or lay blame, because I don't think it's that serious. It is just a trend I notice that could become dangerous, particularly if Wesnoth has to - as I suspect it will - move in some new direction in the near future as its present "completed" sections' invariability starts to become tired.
[/offtopic]

[locutus]

theres too many darned complications to this.
AKA
violates KISS
AKA
against wesnothian philosophy
AKA
not gonna happen

[irrevenant]

not gonna happen

Yes, I think we'd come to that conclusion.

If it's not going to be an ability though, can it at least be clearly denoted in the unit WML somewhere?

[EDIT] I've just discovered that it is in the WML. flies=true in the movetype WML. So there you go...

[Jetrel]

[EDIT] I've just discovered that it is in the WML. flies=true in the movetype WML. So there you go...

This was because, for graphical reasons, it was necessary to have this noted somewhere. Flying units don't ever have the "transparent water over legs" effect applied.

[BuBu]

My objetive is to create a clear way to identify the fly units.

I observe that has two types of fly in wesnoth that are:

- That touch the land (some Drakes, Silphs). It use the land of "avoid".
- That dont touch the land (Bats, ghosts). It use always 50% of "avoid".

Both can be over and can go through CHARMS, DEEP WATER, LAVA and other hard terrain, so IMO this is a GREAT advantage to don't be a ability.

But some are saying that is set by a moviment type and will create too much trouble, so only put a clear way to identify that they could FLY and will be better.

[irrevenant]

What BuBu said.

I think we've gotten hung up on "should fly be an ability", when the question should really be "should a unit's status as a flying unit be clearly identified somewhere".

The first question is contentious. The latter is hopefully a clear "Yes".

And like BuBu pointed out, it would be good to distinguish between combat-flyers and flyers that engage on the ground.